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There is an initial port of gtk+ to Mac OS X (and an older, less complete port: gtk+osx). The Java toolkits run on OS X. Tk supports OS X natively (according to this -- I can't say I've ever come across a Tcl/Tk script on a Mac). There might be others.

wxWindows is just a wrapper around the Mac APIs, so it shoudn't be ugly.

As far as non-native toolkits go, I think qt actually looks pretty good under OS X. Here's a good link: Qt/Mac is Mac OS X Native

Further rumours of running Windows apps natively in OS X, are nothing new. A decade ago, the idea was touted as Red Box.

Many posters have argued that for Apple to actively support other platforms natively such as Win32, .NET, KDE, GTK and Java are counter-productive in terms of promoting their own native Cocoa and iApps. However providing OS level hooks to run .Net/Windows applications through mono/wine would allow 3rd party volunteers to complete the efforts. [Off-topic]Similarly, Apple mightn't be an active participant in the virtualization area such as porting Xen but providing implicit support in XNU wouldn't hurt either[/Off-topic].

I have another wild theory: It might actually exist and be a, currently, hidden Apple internal subsystem for running cross-platform applications in XCode. Since the NeXT days, there's been a Cocoa subsystem for Windows which facilitates Apple building iSuite apps for Vista. The missing piece? Click Run in XCode and an embedded Wine-subsystem will launch enough of Windows to show you, with high fidelity, how the application will behave under Vista/XP.

That scenario would save Apple a lot of time in terms of testing their Windows applications. If they wanted to re-launch Cocoa as a cross-platform deployment platform makes more sense, to me at least, than the proposal that Apple will endorse running natively the Windows version of Photoshop et alia.

gtk+ runs on win32 and Mac OS X quartz.
so it's really as simple as: QT, or gtk+ . If you like c++ then gtkmm or qt. There are also java and c# bindings.

Thx for the tip, I will look it up.

I tried several, including:

gnome-launch-box
http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gnome-launch -box

which is nice, but not as configurable as slickrun. The Gnome panel applet for launching stuff is also nice, but not really as convenient as SR. I guess any of these combined with a couple of scripts in the system path would do the trick, but not nearly as easy as it would be doing it the SR way.

I haven't used it myself, but it's certainly for real (as in, contributed code back to the gtk trunk)

http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx

Cheers... -Geoff

Imendio are working on it: http://developer.imendio.com/projects/gtk-macosx

GTK 2.10 has an experimental backend for OS X. That was in the changelog for the 2.10.0 release: http://www.gtk.org/gtk-2.10-announcement.html. There is a project page about GTK on OS X at http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Gtk_Mac_OS_X.

GTK+ actually has a good API documentation.
What is more lacking are good up to date tutorials, and some functions are not always documented.
But the framework is there for all of this to come together, once every one write documentation for every method, which is now a requirement for some libs.
People can say what they want about Anjuta, but it includes plugins that uses useful things like devhelp http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Devhelp which is a very useful tool, integrated with gtkdoc, which should be used to write all the API docs for Gnome.
When I see the number of good docs available in my devhelp, I think Gnome doc is improving, and recent decisions do everything to improve the state of docs in Gnome.

What I think is sad, is that good practices are lost, because there are no good tutorials, and the most up to date book about Gnome 2 development is already out of date, to a point where if you forbid the use of deprecated methods, most of it won't even compile. Don't get me wrong, as long as you allow deprecated methods, they work just fine, but newest ones are more efficient. I just want to show how up to date doc with some examples of good practices is important for Gnome.

Going to have to say Trillian = bloat + not completely free... and slow to develop. (And for my own irritation... skins so mottled that you have to re-learn how to use the app with each new skin or design your own) Gaim = slim + completely free... as in beer... as in open source and speedily developed... except for -just- recently as they are trying to get to 2.0 and add all the features and new code from the google summer of code team that was working on GAIM. Not to mention you have three flavors of security... gaim-encryption.. best one out there... gaim-e which I don't have any experience with.. and Off-The-Record encryption.. which is kinda like that little kid that lived down the block and spray painted his bike black so he could be cool like you... but is ok encryption and what AdiumX for OS X is stuck with thanks to no native GTK for OS X (but not for long! http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Gtk_Mac_OS_X). Anyway.. Gaim is a bit more ugly, for sure.. but if you're practical and admire utility and inginuity... GAIM is the way to go. http://gaim.sf.net/ However, if yer mr. money buckets and like having to add stuff like a Jabber PLUG IN in order to use the jabber protocol and like lots of confusion because theres no UI guidelines when people make skins and you're not too concerned with the fact that AOL/Time-Warner actually sells a product to capture text sent over their instant messaging networks, and sells them to corporations... or that about three lines of PERL will do the same thing for another 'tech savvy' guy that sits three cubes down from you... well obviously security/privacy isn't anything important to you.

the killers for me at least are Excel, Visio and Project. The OpenOffice version of the first doesn't scale near to where I need it

What you really mean is "I'm locked in but I can't be bothered to free myself from MS". Openoffice Calc is an excellent equavalent to MS Excel.

the second two still don't have any real equivalents in the Linux space.

Yes they do.
Visio -> Dia
Project -> Planner

For Project, what about Planner? (http://developer.imendio.com/wiki/Planner) and Dia? Probably not comparable in terms of capabilities though, but it's something.

A couple months ago, Anders Carlsson quickly touched upon deprecating age-old library cruft from GNOME and thus making the environment leaner and easier to understand. Unfortunately, he says that such a thing wouldn't be able to happen at least until GNOME 3.0 rolls out. This can't come soon enough.

A couple months ago, Anders Carlsson quickly touched upon deprecating age-old library cruft from GNOME and thus making the environment leaner and easier to understand. Unfortunately, he says that such a thing wouldn't be able to happen at least until GNOME 3.0 rolls out. This can't come soon enough.

Liferea
Straw
Blam

In fact, many programmers will probably "give away the razor and charge for the blades" by creating software frameworks then charging reasonable fees for custom enhancements as users desire them.

Examples: Fluendo, Canonical, and Imendio. They're all pretty new companies, so while we may not know how sound the business model is, we'll know soon.

You might find Imendio Planner interesting. Some clever chap came up with an XSLT file to convert MS Project files to Planner files. Of course, there is no 1:1 mapping between the two programs. :)

You might find Imendio Planner interesting. Some clever chap came up with an XSLT file to convert MS Project files to Planner files. Of course, there is no 1:1 mapping between the two programs. :)

try Planner.

Perhaps this might be relevant?

Imendio Planner

Jamboree

Rhythmbox

I like to use BLAM!. It is written with the mono APIs and has some solid features. Straw is another free application that does the same thing execpt it is written in plain old C instead of C#.

For a consolidated source of documentation for Gnome development, you might also check out Devhelp. It is "an API documentation browser for GNOME 2". You can get source, RPM, or SRPM on their site, and Gentoo has it in Portage.